Dear Game of Thrones, Season 3: Please Don’t Suck

I’ve been let down by television before, and I don’t think I could bear getting hurt again. Lately, I’ve felt television has been taking advantage of our relationship, violating our agreement that it would provide me with mindless escapism in exchange for me ignoring my family and books, and promising to purchase advertised products I don’t need and can’t afford. I’ve kept my end of the bargain.

I’ve been looking forward to the new season of Games of Thrones since last June. For months, whenever I overheard people talking about Game of Thrones I would scoot my chair up to their table and say, ‘Season 3 premieres on Sunday March 31.’ To give you some perspective on my excitement, whenever anyone asks me my kids’ birthdays, I answer, ‘One is in the spring. One is in the summer. Or maybe it’s the other way around.’

Season 1 was incredible. Spoiler alert: When that surprising thing happened, that was so surprising. I don’t want to give anything away, but I was all like, ‘That just happened? Really? Wow!’

Season 2 was also pretty great. Spoiler alert: I could have done with more surprises. I was all like, ‘That just happened? Because I kind of expected that to happen.’

But season 3, you have me worried. Maybe I’m cynical because I’ve been hurt by television so recently, most specifically by How I Met Your Mother. I finally gave up on the show in the middle of season 8 when I took a long look at How I Met Your Mother and asked myself, Why are we still together? Sometimes you stay together because of history but the good times had probably ended in season 3, and that meant the majority of our history had been bad. And I couldn’t shake the feeling the show was laughing behind my back and thought I was an idiot.

I’ve been hurt by Community season 4. The first 3 seasons were brilliantly funny, but NBC decided it was too quirky to appeal to a broad audience, fired the creator and writers, and hired a new team to make it formulaic and unfunny. Mission accomplished. I stopped watching shortly after the season premiere. I’ve been playing board games with my sons instead. Thanks, NBC.

New Girl season 2 is already looking a little long in the tooth and I’m predicting I’ll lose interest by next year, but I’ll probably keep watching for quite a few bad seasons just as long as Zooey Deschanel still has big eyes and shiny hair.

Those are the only shows I watch. (Except for Who’s the Boss? We’re watching it as a family and at the end of each episode we debate who was the boss for the episode. Spoiler alert: Mona.)

Don’t let me down, season 3. I love the writing. I love the 5-minute monologues when so many other shows opt for fast edits in the hopes of tricking the audience into believing something exciting just happened. I do have one complaint: I could do with fewer boobs. Maybe even none at all. For a show in which characters are constantly talking about how cold it is, and direly predicting ‘winter is coming,’ shouldn’t the women be wearing more clothing? It’s distracting to constantly add topless women to the background for no apparent reason. Is there an HBO guy in charge of adding unnecessary boobs to scenes? I’m not a prude, I’m just worried you’re going to ruin boobs through over-familiarity, relegating them to the category of window dressing.

I’m not difficult to please, just promise me that King Joffrey will die this season. Maybe even twice. Don’t let me down, Game of Thrones, season 3. You’re all the television I have left. I’m getting too old to start over again.

Finally, a logical connection between “Game of Thrones” and “How I Met Your Mother” !

I think I can explain the over-abundance of boobs. The producers of “Game of Thrones”, “Boardwalk Empire” and “The Borgias” had each been concerned with the lack of natural breasts in Hollywood (or Teaneck or wherever they film these days). Any historian could tell you that there were not silicone boobies in the olden days or in the mystical land of Narnia. Each production team went all-out to get as many actresses as they could who didn’t yet have surgically enhanced knockers. Obviously, they all under-estimated the number of naturals available, and were soon faced with a glut of actresses who may not have brought much else to the table.

The logical solution was to just drop topless women into damn near any scene they could. I’m reminded of the scene in Boardwalk Empire where Nucky Thompson walks into the shop for some salt water taffy and surprises two salesgirls who were sweeping up without their blouses on. I thought that was somewhat gratuitous. I had some misgivings, but I kept watching despite the partially clad women.

I watched the last two episodes of Community and loved them! Now I am worried. Either you didn’t see their brilliance since you turned it off, or I am one of those lame middle of the broad audience people.

I turned on Thrones during a very cold winter scene when 5-6 men on horseback rode through a tunnel into a forest where a bunch of people had been dismembered. Heads, arms, torsos, toes and legs were cast about and blood darkened the white snow.

I screamed to Danny, “Turn it off! Turn it off!” He couldn’t find the button on the remote. I finally jumped up from my comfy spot on the couch and ripped the cable from the wall!!!!!!

People keep talking about this Game of Thrones like it is the new Mad Men. Neither of which I have ever seen. Then again, I am apparently a glutton for punishment and continuing bad TV, because I am STILL on board with HIMYM & Community. I just love Joel McHale. I don’t think I can give him up. But yeah, this season . . . sheesh. As for HIMYM. I feel like I’ve invested too much of my life already into that show, but I refuse to quit it until I MEET THE MOTHER ALREADY. Seriously, TV. You’re killing me here.

Spoiler alert: He meets their mother, Zooey Deschanel, on the set of Game of Thrones in a heated argument over whether the topless scenes in Community were jumping the shark or avant garde network programming.

I watched the first season as a marathon on New Year’s Eve 2 years ago. It was totally awkward, though, because we were watching it with a 12-year old kid and his parents. The gratuitous boobs AND the pre-teen boy made for a bad scene. I don’t want that kid to get into high school expecting boobs everywhere. It ain’t gonna happen…

I definitely have high hopes for season 3! How can you go wrong with yunno mystical creatures that blow fires out of their mouths?! Is that too much of a spoiler? Oh well! How I met Your Mother has left me a little down… It would have been awesome if this was the final season, but it’s not. 😦

I don’t watch any of these shows you’ve mentioned, partly because I don’t have HBoobO and partly because i just don’t. But I did hear that Lord Greatjon Umber had part of his ear bitten off in a tussle at a Newcastle Travelodge (You’d like to think Lord Umber wouldn’t be in a Travelodge, but there he was). Which makes him a bad-ass. Then I heard that, on the show, he got his fingers bitten off by a wolf and then he was like, “Well-played, wolf. I bow to your badassery.”

I don’t know why I know this much about this show, but the point is, all my guy friends who watch it are totally into the sex. So I appreciate your appreciation of boobs as things not to be overindulged on for fear of loss of appreciation.

I read all the Game of Thrones books last year, because I was too cheap to get HBO (or a TV, for a start). But now that I have both, would you say the show could still surprise me with anything, other than the quantity of boobs?

Revisiting your eariler comment: I think you man card is subject to removal. But since I am only a male reader of your blog, and not actually one or your male friends, I think this judgement is out of my jurisdiction.

So many things to say…
1) We have now seen the first episode of season 3. Where you disappointed? I was disappointed when it ended.
2) Agreed. Joffrey needs to die a horrible death. So does his mother.
3) I have not read the books however He-Who has and although he enjoys the show in his opinion the books are much better.
4) The boob thing does not even register. We watched a season of “Gladiator” and I am pretty sure it was just porn. Not even soft core porn. Just porn. It seems to have put everything else on a different level so “Game of Thrones” and “Shameless” seem kind of tame as far as the boobs go.

the only disappointment i felt with the season 3 premiere was when the screen went black. i literally went NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
New Girl is still really funny and cute- some episodes more than others, but in general it’s keeping up the greatness- that’s my two cents of zooey deschanel 😀
have you given “vikings” a go? a new hbo show. dont know what to think of it, watched the first two episodes, and was kind of disappointed. not enough boobs, in my opinion. didn’t knock my socks off- maybe because i had high hopes for it, but yeah…

I liked the premiere of season 3 and realized I had forgotten how complicated the story was. I shouldn’t have been, since I discovered the series last year after season 2 was over, and I inhaled seasons 1 and 2 like the addictive drug it is. After I finished the last episode available from On Demand, I shouted “Why?!” to the heavens and couldn’t stop shaking for 4 days.

I keep hearing how back Community Season 4 is and I’ve been too terrified to watch the season premiere. Either I won’t find it funny and the illusion of its awesomeness will be shattered, or perhaps even worse, I WILL find it funny and I’m one of the masses that Community watches hate. Damnit.

I’m currently watching the third season of How I Met Your Mother and I have to say that my trepidation grows with every passing day as people tell me that really, it all goes south from there. There is a part of me that refuses to believe such lies, but all the same, I am worried….

As a side note, I have just finished Game of Thrones Season 1 and thought that it was excellent. However I could not for the life of me figure out why Littlefinger was waxing lyrical about being a man while two woman had sex on a couch behind him. Evidently there was some great message that I missed.